With all three main party leaders having now agreed to participate in televised debates in the run-up to the next general election, Scotland’s Opportunist-in-Chief is threatening to throw his toys out of the pram
unless he’s included in any debate shown north of the border.

But Salmond is indulging in pure gesture politics once again. As my colleague Stephen Glenn has pointed out before, Salmond has no right to expect to take part in a leaders’ debate when he won’t even be a candidate at the next Westminster election.

He leads the fifth biggest party at Westminster (behind the Democratic Unionists) and will be fielding candidates in less than 10 per cent of constituencies UK-wide.

The Real Women policy paper which we’ll be discussing on Saturday afternoon at Lib Dem Federal Conference is, on the whole, a very good one. It contains lots of proposals which will help make women’s lives better, covering issues like safety, childcare, health and discrimination.

But there is one significant part of the policy motion which is flawed and that’s in the sections covering body image. Basically, the problem is that it seeks to use state legislation and regulation to tackle issues which can only really be addressed through processes of cultural change. As a result, its proposals …

This is the first in a regular series of articles by Scottish-based bloggers giving their thoughts about developments in Scottish politics. Bernard Salmon is a Lib Dem activist based in Inverness and blogs at thesoundofgunfire.blogspot.com.

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond proved himself to be a wee sleekit cowerin’ tim’rous beastie last week.

His betrayal of the SNP pledge to abolish the council tax and replace with a so-called ‘local’ income tax (in reality a nationally-set tax of 3p in the pound) was supposedly motivated by the fact that the parliamentary arithmetic was against him. Although the Scottish Lib Dems supported …

The new leader of the Scottish Lib Dems, Tavish Scott MSP, has agreed to take part in a bloggers’ interview. This will take place at the Scottish Lib Dem conference in Edinburgh on Saturday October 11 between 3.25pm and 4pm.

The interview is open to any Lib Dem blogger. All that is required is that you write up the interview on your blog. If you don’t have a blog of your own, you could write it up on Lib Dem Voice or another site of your choice.